Over the weekend, many of us in the San Diego area got to rejoice vicariously in the successful retrieval of the four Artemis II astronauts and their space capsule by Navy divers and personnel of the U.S.S. John P. Murtha (LPD 26). Hundreds of hard-working sailors got to experience the retrieval in person.
Those of us with internet access could view a NASA feed of the descent of the space capsule and its splashdown off the southern California coast. Both the internet and local television channels covered some of the process of securing the capsule and then transferring astronauts and capsule to the Murtha.
It took a while after the 5:07 PDT April 10 Pacific Ocean landing of the Orion capsule to fully stabilize it, a while longer to transport first the astronauts and then the capsule to the nearby Murtha, where preliminary medical checks were done on the astronauts and the capsule was secured for transport back to San Diego. All went well despite stronger than expected ocean currents. The capsule will be inspected and then transferred to the Kennedy Space Center for further analysis.
Per the San Diego Union-Tribune’s lead article: “An imposing ship built to wage war docked in San Diego on Saturday morning in the name of peace and human exploration, delivering the capsule that Artemis II astronauts rode to a flawless landing a day earlier.”
Since moving to San Diego about five years ago, I’ve lived close to a large military housing complex, but know little of the lives of the naval personnel there. When I recently visited the U.S.S. Midway Museum in San Diego’s harbor, I got ample evidence of the confined, somewhat claustrophobic quarters of the floating village that constitutes a large ship. A few glimpses of an area naval base from a passing trolley, a brief “float by” of publicly accessible areas of San Diego’s harbor, have done little to dispel for me the mystery of how our Navy functions. So it was special to see a little of a naval operation in “real time.”
You could perhaps say that my relation with the U.S. Navy began a long time ago, even before I was born. My late father was stationed on the U.S.S. Cabot (CVL-28) in the Pacific theater during the latter part of World War II. It seems likely that he spent a little of his service in port in San Diego, but he rarely talked about his Navy time. All we, his children, got as evidence were a few pictures of his immediate crew and a favorite close-up photograph of him wearing his Navy whites and cap (covering the baldness that had come early to this unintended sailor). When I visited the Midway, I got to see a larger ship, but one of similar vintage to the one where Dad had served.
In 2026, getting to be a virtual witness to the services rendered by the crew of the Murtha was especially welcome. Amid all the turmoil and uncertainty of operations in the Middle East, it was reassuring to be witness to a more peaceable use of naval expertise.
After the Artemis crew’s return to Houston, I relished part of the brief speech delivered by astronaut Reid Wiseman as he posed with his teammates: “It’s a special thing to be a human and it’s a special thing to be on planet Earth.”
Amen.
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